Boa Tarde Caroline.
Michael and Bob are correct.
Carpathia was not capable of 17 knots unless she had a 2 knot current helping the engines and a very strong wind blowing her along.
Carpathia had 58 miles to run from where she turned at half past midnight to the false( incorrecto posicao do angustia?))distress position.
At 4pm, after 3 hours and 30 minutes, she arrived at the survivors. The position where they were was on the east side of the ice and only 49 miles away from where she started. If she travelled 49 miles in 3 hours and 30 minutes, her speed was exactly 14 knots, not 17 knots.
Captain Rostron made a very big mistake in his navigation. He forgot about the Gulf Stream. He did not find the survivors because of his skill as a navigator but because
Titanic's 4th Officer Boxhall was clever enough to put green flares in his boat before leaving
Titanic. If Boxhall had not had green flares on his boat, Rostron would have kept going and possibly hit the same ice berg as did
Titanic or run into the pack ice. To my mind, Rostron was very much like many so-called heroes. He risked the lives of every single person on his ship. Fortunately for him,them and the survivors, it all turned out well.
Not only that, but by sending up rockets on his way to the rescue, he might have drawn other rescue ships away from the scene of the disaster and toward his own ship and we might now be discussing a loss of life twice as big as it was.
See here for a picture of what I mean:
I don't think Captain Rostron was a hero.. just a very lucky man at the right place at the right time. The real heroes were Titanic's
engineers and crew members who stayed at their posts trying to save the ship until it was too late for them to save themselves.
Jim C.
PS the word
Hero is used very badly in this case (and quite ofter in English).
Rostron did not make any personal sacrifice or do anything out of the ordinary. He did his duty. If anything, he risked his ship, crew and passengers without properly calculating the risk involved. He took a gamble and it payed-off handsomely for him. The rest is history.